Sho Chandra, Bloomberg News reporter, National Press Club volunteer, 53
Shobhana Chandra, an economics reporter in the Bloomberg News Washington bureau and a National Press Club member for more than 13 years, died Wednesday, Feb. 20, following a flight from India to the United States.
Chandra, 53, was in India on an annual trip to visit family. She developed a blood clot in her leg on the journey home and collapsed shortly after landing at Dulles International Airport, according to her friend and former colleague Vineeta Anand.
Known as “Sho,” Chandra joined the Club in June 2005. Since 2012, she has served as one of eight editors of the Wire, the Club's electronic newsletter. She also was a member of the Club’s Scholarship Team.
Chandra began working for Bloomberg in July 1998 as a general assignment and consumer reporter in the news service’s Princeton bureau, according to a note sent to Bloomberg staff by editor-in-chief John Micklethwait and reported in Talking Biz News on Feb. 21. She came to Washington in 2005 to join Bloomberg’s economy team.
“Our readers were smarter because of her dedication, knowledge and close attention to accuracy and fairness,” Micklethwait wrote. “For those of us lucky enough to have known her as a colleague and friend, she was unfailingly gracious, funny and loyal. She took enormous pride in her work and frequently was a mentor to less experienced reporters and the countless interns who thrived under her tutelage. She will be greatly missed.”
Chandra was committed to the Club, winning numerous Vivian Awards for her work on the Wire. The Vivian honors the Club's top volunteers.
“Sho was a fastidious, conscientious editor and absolutely dependable,” said Mark Schoeff Jr., co-chair of the Club’s Publications Team, which publishes the Wire and manages content on the Club website. “She exemplified the Club's volunteer spirit. She always had a positive attitude and warm smile.”
Each year since 2012, Chandra took several two-week shifts at the helm of the Wire, editing copy and formatting the Wire for publication after working a full day at Bloomberg. She was a skilled editor who approached her volunteer job with unflagging enthusiasm, said former Club President Donna Leinwand Leger, who serves as Publications co-chair with Schoeff.
"She was so energetic and always cheerful," Leinwand Leger said. "Whenever she came to the Club, it was with a big smile on her face."
Anand said she was heartbroken to learn of Chandra’s untimely passing. “Sho was brilliant, funny, compassionate, extraordinarily generous, and beloved by all who knew her,” she said. “And very stylish. She laughed about her vast earring collection.”
A Bloomberg colleague remembers Chandra’s charming personality.
“Just before she left for India, she helped organize a work-anniversary lunch for a very good mutual friend,” Jonathan Make wrote in a post on Medium. “In typical Sho fashion, although she did it last minute, she did a great job and wrote a roast/ode to our friend that she read to all gathered colleagues. It was filled with humor and recollections and she gave everyone who contributed a good ribbing, too.”
Andrea Edney, the Club's immediate past president and a former reporter at Bloomberg, described Chandra as a terrific journalist who excelled at telling the story of the numbers.
"As a journalist and as a person, Sho embodied the best of what we are and can be," Edney said. "She was warm and witty, she was whip smart and she cared. She was my friend. She was taken from us far too soon. We all miss her."
Chandra, Edney said, was her first friend in Washington.
"She cared about her family, her friends, her colleagues," Edney said. "I will miss having brunch with her and catching up on who is doing what where. I miss her advice and her brilliant smile."
Chandra was a board member of the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. She covered all aspects of the U.S. economy, from jobs and consumer spending to manufacturing, trade, prices and housing. Prior to joining Bloomberg, Chandra wrote for two major business newspapers in New Delhi, the Economic Times and the Financial Express, according to her SABEW bio.
She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from Delhi University in India. She received a master’s degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
Chandra was preceded in death by her mother, who passed away at 92 last year. She is survived by two sisters.